"The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them but to be indifferent toward them: That's the essence of inhumanity."
--George Bernard Shaw
"What you have to understand about my people is that they are a noble people. Humility is their form of pride. And if you can humble yourself before them, they will do anything you ask."
--Frank Underwood, "House of Cards"
Reading the article by Peter Hessler in this week's New Yorker (Jan 13,2025) about the resurrection and triumph of Lauren Boebert, who touted her personal history--a high school drop out, pregnant at 17, arrested, down and out, "I'm straight out of Rifle, running a restaurant with my four little boys and with my G.E.D," she told her constituents.
All this put me in mind, somehow, of doing rounds at the New York Hospital, in the early 1970's, as a a medical student, the lowest of the low in hospital hierarchy, a part of what one patient called, "the thundering herd," a group of men in white uniforms, nurses, and a phalanx of professors of medicine, entering a patient's room with the chief of service, in his spotless, long white lab coat, his pinstriped vest, Brooks Brother's tie, and everything but angels hovering above blowing horns, heralding the arrival of the great man at the bedside.
And, what really stopped me in my tracks was seeing the patient, who might be a Bowery Bum, now scrubbed by the nurses for the arrival of the great man, sit up and look around him, suddenly the center of attention, rapt attention, I might add, everyone hanging on his every word, as the great man in white asked him, with utter politeness, about his symptoms. Had he become short of breath walking up a hill, or was he short of breath all the time? Had he noticed the swelling in his ankles was gone in the morning only to return later in the afternoon?
And what was really striking, when the great man was really a good clinician, is that he conveyed to the patient and to every member of the ward party, that this man in the bed was among the most important people on earth, because he was a patient. Didn't matter what he was outside the hospital, once in that bed he was not Dirty Joe, or whatever his friends called him on the outside, he was Mr. Smith and he was treated with the utmost respect.
And the great man was truly interested in his answers, listening carefully, asking questions to clarify the information. Did he find he could tolerate some foods, but not, for example fatty foods?
After the thundering herd moved on, as the medical student, I often had to visit the patient later, to draw his blood or to do some other task, and the patient often asked who the great man was, even though he'd been told before. "Well," the patient would often say. "I hope I did okay."
"What do you mean?" I would ask.
"Well, you know, I hope I gave the right answers. He seemed pretty concerned."
After all the build up, the patient had been told by the nurses about the coming of the great man, prepared by the interns, rehearsed by the residents, and after all that unaccustomed attention, he didn't want to disappoint anyone.
Sometimes I found myself saying, "You know you are just as important as he is."
Don't know why I said that.
But it seemed like the lesson I had learned.
This was a medical school where we were constantly told that we had been selected out of the multitudes, and we had to prove we were worthy of our spot in the class constantly, and even if we were lucky enough to be selected to be interns, there was a merit pyramid, so there were half of each class eliminated each year with only 10 senior residents left from a class of 30 interns. But, no matter how select we were, it was basic gospel truth, the patient in the bed was the most important person in the room.
And that's maybe where Lauren Boebert's appeal, and maybe Trump's appeal, is.
Doesn't matter if people call you white trash or disrespect you or ignore you, you are important, and just as important as all those folks with Harvard degrees.
As we say in New Hampshire, "Just saying."
